Rebecca Scott and Tera Hunter | A Pretense of Ownership: The Attempted Enslavement of Rose Bazile (Port-au-Prince, Santiago de Cuba, New Orleans)

2026 Stanley J. Stein Lecture

Almost a decade after the Haitian Revolution led to the abolition of slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, Napoleon Bonaparte sent an expeditionary force to try to crush the Revolution and reverse emancipation. Though he failed on both counts, the destruction his assault unleashed turned thousands into refugees. Among those who fled in 1803 were a man born in southern France named Pierre Bazy, an African-born woman named Gertrude, and Gertrude’s child named Rose Bazile. Upon arrival in Cuba and later in Louisiana, Pierre claimed to own Rose, and thus to control her labor, her behavior, and access to her body. Rose nonetheless found ways to live according to her own contrary claim to free status, and to document that freedom.

Brazil Lab | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies

Contact the organizers